Driver assistance systems for autonomous longitudinal and/or lateral control of a vehicle, i.e. designed to assume one or more longitudinal and/or lateral control tasks of the vehicle, are known from the art in different realizations. Such systems usually have in common that the vehicle operator can transfer one or more control tasks for longitudinal and/or lateral control to the corresponding driver assistance system if required.
The control tasks concerning longitudinal control of the vehicle include, for example, controlling the longitudinal acceleration and longitudinal speed of the vehicle or the vehicle speed in general and maintaining a specific distance from a preceding vehicle. These control tasks can be performed either manually by the vehicle operator, in particular through manual control or actuation of the brake (brake pedal) and the accelerator (accelerator pedal), or autonomously by a driver assistance system which is connected to the corresponding control devices in the vehicle.
The control tasks concerning the lateral control of the vehicle include, for example, controlling the lateral acceleration and lateral speed or the vehicle steering in general and keeping (lane keeping) or changing a lane (lane change), turning, driving through a curve and/or overtaking another road user. These control tasks can also be performed either manually by the vehicle operator, in particular through manual control or actuation of the vehicle steering (vehicle steering wheel), or autonomously by a driver assistance system which is connected to the corresponding control devices in the vehicle.
Driver assistance systems are also already known which combine the control tasks concerning both longitudinal and lateral control of a vehicle in one system and thus enable an entirely autonomous control of a vehicle (autonomous vehicle guidance) by the driver assistance system.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,116,369 A shows an adaptive travel control system for a vehicle, in particular an ACC system (Adaptive Cruise Control System) which is capable of operating in at least two modes, a first cruise mode, in which the speed of the vehicle is controlled to maintain a set speed, and a second follow mode, in which the speed of the vehicle is controlled to maintain a set distance from the preceding target vehicle, wherein the system includes means to switch from cruise mode to follow mode if a target vehicle is detected within a predefined distance of the vehicle, and a driver display interface for displaying the mode of operation of the adaptive cruise control system.
DE 10 2006 058 412 A1 shows a lane keeping system in which a current lane being driven on by the vehicle is detected by means of a lane detection system, a leading vehicle preceding the vehicle and its track of movements is detected as an object track by means of an object detection system, and support in keeping the lane is realized by means of a control device, wherein the control device can be operated in a purely lane-related type of support in which the support is given, based on the detected current lane, in a purely object-related type of support, in which the support is given, based on the determined object track, and in a merged type of support corresponding to a combination of the lane-related and object-related types of support, wherein it is determined as a function of the driving speed of the vehicle which type of assistance to chose as support.
A substantial disadvantage of the known driver assistance systems for autonomous longitudinal and/or lateral control of a vehicle is that the vehicle operator is faced with an increasingly high operational effort or increasingly complex operational tasks due to the number and variety of systems used in modern vehicles, including also other systems such as navigation systems, multimedia systems or comfort systems. The known systems usually make use of operating elements such as buttons, levers or other switchgear.